The described aspects relate to media distribution systems, and more particularly, to the delivery of one or more categorized content and the receipt of selected ones of the categorized content based on user preferences.
Communication networks have been designed to deliver content to recipients. For example, one type of communication network comprises a unicast system, which delivers content to one recipient at a time, i.e. on a one-to-one basis. Because of this one-to-one nature, a user of a unicast system nay request to receive content of interest to that user only. When desiring to communicate a single piece of content to a large number of recipients, however, unicast systems are relatively inefficient. For example, in a unicast system, the delivery of identical content to many endpoints is resource intensive, since each endpoint must redundantly request the same content and reserve a predetermined amount of bandwidth, thereby consuming valuable network resources and limiting scalability. In contrast, multicast systems are communication networks which transmit information to multiple recipients at the same time. Multicast delivery technologies address the problem of cost effective delivery of content usable by a large number of network endpoints. Despite its network utilization advantages, however, multicast technology presents a challenge in addressing personalized and narrow-interest content delivery.
Further, the desire for mobile consumption of content is increasing along with the increasing popularity and functionality of mobile communication devices.
Additionally, to catch the attention of the user and provide a more efficient use of the user's time it is desirable for content to be directed to the specific interests or preferences of the device user. Current methods of targeting content to users are inefficient, as these methods typically select content based on characterizations of an entire group of users receiving a multicast transmission.
Thus, improved systems and method of distributing and receiving content of interest to the device user are desired.